Bergen

I spent the day of 24 September in Bergen, together with European Commissioner Janez Potocnik, responsible for environment, attending the Ministerial Meeting of OSPAR. OSPAR is the mechanism to implement the Oslo and the Paris Conventions, adopted to protect the marine environment in the North-East Atlantic.

At the morning, before the conference we had a good meeting with Minister Erik Solheim in his hotel room. It was good to witness how well the Minister and the Commissioner understood each other, both having clear and rather similar ideas on how to make ongoing worldwide environmental efforts succeed.

On a more personal note: I enjoyed to be in Bergen and stayed over for part of the weekend, together with my wife. The town was splendid, washed in the autumn sunshine and (for the first time) we had enough time to explore the beauty of the old houses close to the centre. We went shopping at the famous fish market. People even offered to us whale meet to taste, which of course was for us one step too far. But will go definitely back – both officially and in private capacity.